Birth Of The Crafts-God

Evening came around and Lucas...was still in the work-station.

Earlier in the day, Wally had arrived with his elder sister to offer their appreciation for Lucas' help as well as the vestige he gave Wally, however, the latter refused the monetary gift. In the end, Wally's sister had invited him over for dinner with the family as a way of saying thanks, but Lucas had also rejected that.

There was a reason why he was single despite living two lifetimes, and that was because Lucas prioritised his work more than anything. To Lucas, nothing was better than studying metals and working with them. Everything else came secondary.

"It's about time I closed the store." Lucas murmured as he paused his work and left the room.

One might wonder why he would leave the store open while staying elsewhere, questioning whether Lucas wasn't afraid of being robbed. The truth was, he wasn't. There was no better security than the system, and within the store, the system was an all-seeing existence.

Just as he walked towards the door and prepared to close it, Lucas glanced ahead and saw a drone flying towards him.

Drone delivery services were very common in this world and had almost entirely replaced the need of a deliveryman. Only a few companies who did so for aesthetic reasons had a deliveryman, while the majority of companies used drones as they were much cheaper.

'Did I order anything?' Lucas thought as he stated at the drone hovering in front of him.

A hologram displayed out of it with a rough message.

Reading it, Lucas finally understood what was going on. The drone was sent by Lucy from Novanio Tech, and it contained an invitation for the convention. The invitation was an embroidered card, so it could only be delivered physically.

'Seems like they agreed.'

Lucas wasn't surprised by this as he felt it was inevitable. He had seen the level of vestige-smithing in this city and had a good understanding of it. Although the vestiges, Blue Spear and Dark dagger, were still classified as Grade 3, they exceeded all the current Grade 3 vestiges in the market, and could even compare to some Grade 4 vestiges.

But what made Lucas glad about this news was the future profit he would make.

Custom Grade 3s sold for around ten thousand (10000) federal coins. As Lucas' prices were set by the system, adding onto the fact that the vestiges were still Grade 3, each spear cost at least twenty thousand (18000) federal coins, while the Dark dagger went cheaper for seventeen thousand (15000) federal coins. If they were custom-made variations however, the price would be even greater.

Unlike standard vestiges which had replicas and many created units, custom vestiges were rarer and built based on the customer's request. The Blue Spear and Dark dagger were considered standard items, since they followed a standard built design and would be mass-produced.

'That solves my money issue. But I haven't gotten a mission in a while now.' Lucas thought.

It seemed like the process of earning system coins or even levelling up the system was much more difficult than he thought.

Lucas walked back into the store and went to the computer on the checkout counter. He wanted to look up details of the event as well as its location.

Logging into the Eretrean network on the Kellan Solar System Intranet, Lucas spotted a headline news on the Baylands city-state section, which was his target. The caption was "Two towns found rampaged by a beast swarm in Alleva district. No survivors found."

'Alleva district? Isn't that the place where Ramirez was last sighted?' Lucas thought before clicking on the news.

As he did so, he found out that there were other similar topics being reported by various media channels. It seemed like Alleva district was experiencing a mysterious desolate beasts tide that caused multiple casualties.

The reason why the beasts tide was reported as mysterious was because there was no prior information to it. It was almost as if the beasts had appeared out of nowhere. If they had followed a route, security agencies and freelancers who worked on the outskirts would have spotted them. Also, Alleva district was at the grey zone, and in today's grey zone, there were no desolate beasts' hotspot.

This made the presence of a massive horde of desolate beasts even more concerning and eerie.

After a short while, Lucas left the news section as it had nothing to do with him. Not only was Alleva district really far, but Lucas wouldn't be going there any time soon. He has only taken a look at the news out of curiosity.

. . .

A few moments ago outside the store, just as Lucas received the package from the drone, a shadowy figure stared at him from the distance.

'So that's the guy that's given Ramirez so much trouble lately and got him into this situation? Interesting. I never thought it would be him. I guess this is what they call fate.'

As the figure wore a very dark hoodie and hid in the dark corners of the alley, it was difficult to ascertain who their identity, their gender or even presence.

The figure deemed to smile while staring at Lucas before disappearing into the darkness.

. . .

A couple more days passed by and soon a week went by, which eventually became two weeks.

The day of the conference approached and Lucas attended the event, accompanied by Lucy. The event was held at the Central Prefecture district, and was filled with incredible personages from the vestige-smith industry, electronics industry and so on.

The conference felt more like an extravagant dinner party as all the guests appeared in formal attires, with attendants shuffling to and fro with trays filled with drinks and finger foods.

Being a special guest, Lucas didn't have anything to do, apart from appearing on stage when Novanio Tech would announce their partnership together. The night of the event went by somewhat smoothly following which Lucas returned home.

However, while the event was peaceful, the chaos it caused on the stock market was drastic.

A vestige with the capability of transforming into either a hot or cold weapon in under half a second was something no one had ever seen before. Not even the Tier 1 Grandmasters at the Bernin continent had pulled it off, and these were people who could create Grade 5 vestiges.

What's more, the power of the vestige was unaffected during each transformation, and the weight wasn't so much as to affect a freelancer's abilities. Overall, the new vestige had a ton of advantages with almost no disadvantages.

The stock prices of the other vestige-smith companies began to drop after the announcement, and Novanio Tech's stock price rose on the Baylands Stock Exchange (BSE). The dealership that would be selling the vestiges was a subsidiary of Novanio Tech and wasn't made public on the exchange, but its speculated price range had increased.

Many began considering investing in the dealership as they could all see the potential it had. As for existing rivals, they began contemplating how to find the vestige-smith or at least, get their hands on the vestige for sale.

Meanwhile, the vestige-smith companies and individuals were shocked at such a marvelous creation that they couldn't wait to order theirs and attempt to reverse-engineer it. Although they would most likely not succeed as most vestige-smiths usually added an anti-reverse matrix for that, these companies still wanted to give it a try.

They could all see that this technology would become a trend, and if they were yet to hitch onto the ride, they would be left behind and possibly even go bankrupt. That was a regret none of them were willing to experience.

It was like the event from two years ago which had caused the decline of multiple companies and businesses—like Toman's Workshop—and had even managed to take down a top five company at the time. The events of that year had caused a financial catastrophe in the market, which took two years for the industries involved to recover from, with some even failing to do so.

Except this time around, the event was started off not by any of the top five companies in the weapons vestige-smith market, but a company that came from producing electronics and hardware.

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It sounded crazy that such a company had decided to delve into the weapons industry as a dealership, and on the day they announced that, they also dropped a figurative bomb that shook the entire stock market.

While all of these took place, the man behind it all, Lucas, had long returned to take a break. As it was late at night, he couldn't head back to the West Wing district and had instead stayed at a hotel in the Central Prefecture district. It was paid for by Novanio Tech, so Lucas had no concerns about it, and had instead decide to enjoy himself.

This was because, not just the hotel fees, but his entire travel and stay in the Central Prefecture district this time around was funded by the company.

For the first time since he has transmigrated into this world, Lucas felt at peace and happy. However, this tranquility wouldn't last long.